On the dominance of whole-word knowledge in reading aloud

The localist dual-route model of visual word recognition assumes a routine thataddresses the pronunciation of all words known to the reader (the lexical-semantic pathway) and another routine, operating in parallel, thatassembles pronunciations on the basis of sublexical spelling-sound correspondences. The present experiment exploits theexception effect (in which words that are atypical in terms of their spelling-sound correspondences are named more slowly than typical ones) because it is considered a marker of the joint operation of these two routines. Participants named high- and lowfrequency regular and exception words that were repeated across two blocks of trials. The widely reported interaction between regularity and word frequency is present in Block 1 but is reduced in magnitude in Block 2. DRC, an implemented dual-route model, simulates the data. Taken in conjunction with other reports, the results provide further evidence for a double dissociation between addressed and assembled routines and are consistent with the view that skill in recognizing printed words known to the reader reflects the dominance of orthographic over phonological processing.     

The effects of attractiveness, dominance, and attribute differences on information acquisition in multiattribute binary choice

Two process tracing studies investigated how the information acquisition process in a binary choice task is influenced by the overall level of attractiveness of alternatives, by the magnitude of differences in attractiveness of alternatives, and by the dominance of one alternative. All three factors influenced the subjects' information selection process regarding the multiattribute choice alternatives. Subjects selected more information when the attractiveness difference was small and when one of the alternatives was not dominant. Moreover, they considered more information when the choice alternatives were both unattractive. These findings were obtained when information was presented about the alternatives both numerically and nonnumerically. The experimental results were explained within a sequential sampling strategy framework.     

Automatic activation of attribute knowledge in heuristic inference from memory

In memory-based decision making, people often rely on simple heuristics such as take-the-best (TTB; Gigerenzer & Goldstein, Psychological Review, 103, 650–669, 1996), which processes information about the alternatives sequentially and stops processing as soon as a decision can be made. In this article, we examine the memory processes associated with TTB—in particular, to what degree the selective memory retrieval of relevant information required by TTB is accompanied by automatic activation of associated but irrelevant information. To address this question, we studied the fan effect (Anderson, Cognitive Psychology, 6, 451–474, 1974), which is assumed to arise from automatic spread of activation, in inferences from memory. Participants were instructed to use TTB when making decisions about objects on the basis of previously memorized attribute information. Both the number of attributes required by TTB and the number of attributes associated with an object (i.e., fan level) were manipulated. As it turned out, response times and the correct execution of TTB were a function not only of the number of required attributes, but also of the number of associated attributes. This suggests that information that TTB “ignores” is nevertheless activated in memory.     

Long-term benefits of seeding the knowledge base

Exposure to numerical examples (seed facts) produced a substantial long-term reduction in domain-specific innumeracy. In particular, learning the populations of 24 seed countries improved accuracy of estimates of the populations of 75 untrained countries, both at the time of learning and 4 months later. Consistent with abstraction-based theories of learning and memory, the benefits of having been exposed to the seed facts were as large 4 months after the exposure as immediately after it, despite the specific populations of the seed countries having been forgotten during the interval.     

The development of scientific knowledge of the Earth

Investigation of children's knowledge of the Earth can reveal much about the origins, content and structure of scientific knowledge, and the processes of conceptual change and development. Vosniadou and Brewer (1992 , claim that children construct coherent mental models of a flat, flattened, or hollow Earth based on a framework theory and intuitive constraints of flatness and support. To examine this account, 62 children, aged 5–10 years, and 31 adults ranked 16 pictures according to how well they were thought to represent the Earth. Even young children showed scientific knowledge of the shape of the Earth. There was little or no evidence of naïve mental models, indicating that any intuitions or constraints must be very weak. Instead, before they acquire the scientific view, children's knowledge of the Earth appears to be incoherent and fragmented.     

Rough approximation of pairwise comparisons described by multi‐attribute stochastic dominance

Given a finite set A of actions evaluated by a set of attributes, preferential information is considered in the form of a pairwise comparison table including pairs of actions from subset B⊂A described by stochastic dominance relations on particular attributes and a total order on the decision attribute. Using a rough sets approach for the analysis of the subset of preference relations, a set of decision rules is obtained, and these are applied to a set A\B of potential actions. The rough sets approach of looking for the reduction of the set of attributes gives us the possibility of operating on a multi‐attribute stochastic dominance for a reduced number of attributes. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The development of ordinal numerical knowledge in infancy

A critical question in cognitive science concerns how numerical knowledge develops. One essential component of an adult concept of number is ordinality: the greater than and less than relationships between numbers. Here it is shown in two experiments that 11-month-old infants successfully discriminated, whereas 9-month-old infants failed to discriminate, sequences of numerosities that descended in numerical value from sequences that increased in numerical value. These results suggest that by 11 months of age infants possess the ability to appreciate the greater than and less than relations between numerical values but that this ability develops between 9 and 11 months of age. In an additional experiment 9-month-old infants succeeded at discriminating the ordinal direction of sequences that varied in the size of a single square rather than in number, suggesting that a capacity for non-numerical ordinal judgments may develop before a capacity for ordinal numerical judgments. These data raise many questions about how infants represent number and what happens between 9 and 11 months to support ordinal numerical judgments.     

The role of mutual knowledge in the development of perspective taking

Analysis of research on the development of perspective taking and social cognition leads to a new theoretical synthesis centered around the concept of mutual knowledge. Mutual knowledge is shared, and assumed by the knower to be shared, with other people. Attention to individual mental states, the usual subject matter of social-cognitive research, is necessary only in problematic interactions such as misunderstandings, deceptions, or other strategic interactions in which the ordinary assumption of mutual knowledge must be put aside. The present formulation is able to account for the structural transformations in social-cognitive development while retaining the processing capacity assumptions of the information-processing approaches.     

Prior knowledge and cued recall: category size and dominance

Previous work indicates that our ability to recall a recently experienced word is reduced by the number of related concepts that it activates in permanent memory. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the possibility that dominance of primary associates, and not category size, is responsible for this observation. The results of three experiments involving manipulations of target and cue set size, as well as meaning and rhyme, indicate that category size effects are independent of dominance. In fact, the advantage of smaller categories and fewer activated items is substantially reduced for words having very dominant primary associates. The findings are discussed in relation to the Sensory-Semantic model.     

Comparison and the development of knowledge

This paper considers the role of comparison in the development of knowledge. Results show that comparing similar objects makes them appear more similar. Comparing dissimilar objects, on the other hand does not make them appear more similar, and in some circumstances may make them appear less similar. The effect of comparison on similar items was especially striking since participants judged items to be more similar after comparison even if the comparison task was to list differences between the two items. Further, this effect appears specific to comparison and does not appear to be simply due to a "fleshing out" of object representations (listing properties of two objects without comparing the objects themselves served to increase the objects' similarity regardless of whether the objects were similar or dissimilar to start). This suggests that comparison may play a special role in partitioning bits of experience into categories, sharpening categorical boundaries, and otherwise helping us create conceptual structure above and beyond that offered by the world.     

On the development of procedural knowledge

Amnesic patients demonstrate by their performance on a serial reaction time task that they learned a repeating spatial sequence despite their lack of awareness of the repetition (Nissen & Bullemer, 1987). In the experiments reported here, we investigated this form of procedural learning in normal subjects. A subgroup of subjects showed substantial procedural learning of the sequence in the absence of explicit declarative knowledge of it. Their ability to generate the sequence was effectively at chance and showed no savings in learning. Additional amounts of training increased both procedural and declarative knowledge of the sequence. Development of knowledge in one system seems not to depend on knowledge in the other. Procedural learning in this situation is neither solely perceptual nor solely motor. The learning shows minimal transfer to a situation employing the same motor sequence.     

The development of biological knowledge: A multi-national study

This study was designed to differentiate between universal and culturally specific aspects of children's biological understanding. Kindergartners, second graders, and fourth graders from Israel, Japan, and the United States were asked whether people, other animals, plants, and inanimate objects possessed each of 16 attributes. The attributes included life, unobservable attributes of animals, sensory capacities, and attributes of all living things. The results indicated that children of all three ages in all three countries knew that people, other animals, plants, and inanimate entities were different types of things, with different properties. Children in all cultures were extremely accurate regarding properties of humans, somewhat less accurate regarding properties of other animals and inanimate entities, and least accurate regarding properties of plants. As predicted from cultural analyses, Israeli children were the most likely to fail to attribute to plants qualities that are shared by all living things. Also as predicted, Japanese children were the most likely to attribute to inanimate entities attributes possessed only by living things. In contrast to many previous findings, U.S. children in the study presented here displayed more accurate scientific knowledge than age peers in Japan or Israel. The results were analyzed in terms of how cultural beliefs and linguistic categories affect knowledge acquisition processes and scientific understandings.